Facing a pandemic, some readers find solace in a comforting classic, a taut thriller, or a frothy romance. Or they vow to devour the final volume of Hilary Mantel’s complex Tudor trilogy. But others search for a story filled with humor or zany antics. Kirkus Indie recently reviewed three comic novels that should brighten readers’ moods.
In Matthew Rowland’s Cinematic Immunity, key grip Sam Agonistes struggles to write a clever screenplay for a superstar. Sam’s midlife crises involve an ex-wife and a hostile adult son. But bigger troubles lie ahead in this amusing crime tale. After a gorgeous woman claims that Sam is in danger, some thugs show up wielding Glocks. “A gnarly, satisfying caper set among moviemakers in Hollywood,” our critic writes.
Wake Up, Wanda Wiley by Andrew Diamond features Hannah Sharpe, a difficult character who remains trapped in a farmhouse in an author’s subconscious. Hannah hasn’t appeared in any of Wanda’s 18 romance novels. Soon, Hannah gets a roommate: Trevor Dunwoody, a hero in a thriller that Wanda is ghostwriting. “You’ve been living in a world of male fantasy,” Hannah tells Trevor about his series. “In the real world, not every woman is a hot babe.” Will Hannah finally join the cast of one of Wanda’s books? Our reviewer calls this work “a well-crafted literary satire with something to say about genre fiction.”
A young film fan deals with a series of mundane jobs in Smiley McGrouchpants’ Crouching Schuyler, Hidden Dragon. During the 1990s, Chris Schuyler works as an accountant, a copy editor, a vacuum cleaner salesman, and a fundraising canvasser. According to our critic, Chris’ “ruminations could have been claustrophobic, but McGrouchpants expands them into a keenly subversive portrait of workplace social psychology,” delivering “a funny, caustic tale of a slacker’s dejected resistance to mainstream success.”
Myra Forsberg is an Indie editor.
